Be With Me

by Gabrielle Sands

To all the girls who gave too much and asked for too little—no wonder you prefer the villain who tells you to be selfish while he burns the world to keep you.

me always.

“You care too much. Have you ever been selfish, or is that word foreign to you?" I tilted my head, studying her. "You’re such a fucking good girl—practically a caricature."

While she wasn’t looking, I swiped her lip gloss off her desk and shoved it into my pocket. Why? Fuck if I knew. Probably because I was losing my goddamn mind.

She helped people. I destroyed them.

“I made you a promise.”

Mia Morales had infected my black heart with a virus that compelled me to do right by her.

“I can’t fucking sleep. Every time I close my eyes, I see you so vividly that I can practically taste you.” Romolo leaned in, brushing his lips against my temple. “I don’t know what the fuck you’ve done to me, Berry, but I need to get you out of my system. And I think you need to get me out of yours too.”

“Because I fucking felt like it, all right?” I snapped. I couldn’t tell her it was because taking care of her problems gave me some sick sense of satisfaction. Because I'd derived pleasure from putting someone who'd hurt her in their place. These urges, these feelings, were all so fucking new to me, and I was still figuring out how to deal with them all.

I took her hands in mine and ran my thumbs across her knuckles. “I love you.” The words scorched their way out of me. “I love you like I’ve never loved anything in my goddamn life. It’s terrifying. It’s relentless. You’ve gotten under my skin and into my soul, and you didn’t even try. Somewhere along the way, I stopped being mine and became yours.”